


Where I Can't Hear the Guns Anymore

by ThereIsNoTragedyInThat



Series: Outlander 2020 Bingo Fills [6]
Category: Outlander (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Claire-centric, F/M, Falling In Love, Light Angst, Missing Scene, Outlander Bingo 2020, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reminiscing, Sad and Sweet, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:40:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25866067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThereIsNoTragedyInThat/pseuds/ThereIsNoTragedyInThat
Summary: Claire could still remember the feeling of blood on her hands and dying men’s voice screaming for help all around her.Bingo Fill O5: Middle of the Woods
Relationships: Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser
Series: Outlander 2020 Bingo Fills [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1697500
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32
Collections: Outlander Bingo Challenge





	Where I Can't Hear the Guns Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> I’m re-watching season one and loving the subtle allusions to both Claire and Frank’s PTSD before she time-travels so have a missing scene ;)

Claire inhaled deeply, eyes falling closed, reveling in the pure, untainted air of the forest. A gentle breeze danced through the trees, rustling the leaves and shaking loose the rain drops from earlier in the day. She sat perched on a damp, moss covered cropping of rocks jutting out of a small hillside, alone with her thoughts.

Sitting at her feet was the alibi for this particular outing, her basket overflowing with herbs and random plants, all designed to make people believe she hadn’t wasted away the evening. Not that she had much to prove anymore, being Jamie Fraser’s wife afforded her less suspicion from the McKenzie Clan and some small freedoms.

Nightfall was approaching steadily, the sun having begun its slow descent behind the trees and a thin, rolling fog creeping its way across the earth like a blanket tucking it goodnight. Claire knew that Jamie would come searching soon or at very least, dispatch one of the other men to find her. He was protective and while it still wounded her pride sometimes, she had to remind herself that this was not an era for independent woman to thrive in. Hell, it had been far from easy in own her time, though she supposed she’d gotten rather lucky with Frank.

Shaking her head, a little, Claire tried to be free of those thoughts. She hadn’t noticed when she first travelled…that there was something inexplicably peaceful about the silence here, the fresh air. There were no cars or planes or machinery toiling away in the background and even the villages had a hushed edge to them. While there were surely an array of far from pleasing smells brought on by a lack of general bathing, Claire had grown used to it and when out here...while she didn’t miss the heavy smog that used to lay over London and pollution that would tickle her nose. Yet another reason why she and Frank had chosen the Scottish Highlands for their second honeymoon.

Yet, there was something else. Something that made her stomach twist and her heart ache painfully for the one thing she found that she wished she could share with Frank. He still occupied much of her thoughts, even with the way Jamie made her feel, it was difficult to give up on all the things she thought they would be, what she thought her life would be liKe. Regardless, Claire found, that while siting here, in the serene quiet, her world, the one in which the bloodiest war of history had been fought…felt like a dream.

She hadn’t been sure she could ever purge those memories from her mind. Had seen the same struggle reflected in Frank’s eyes when they’d found each other again. They had filled their days with a normalcy that felt plastic and clumsy, distracted themselves with hobbies like genealogy and herbology, tried to forget. They never could of course, that simply wasn’t going to happen. But being here now, so far away, well, it dulled the edge of phantom screams and made planes and bombs falling from above seem impossible. There was a sort of peace here, even when Claire found herself dealing with bloody injuries, it felt different.

She wished she could have shared that with Frank more than anything. Could have gifted him this small thing and all the men and women who stumbled back home and were no longer able to recognize themselves in the mirror. Her heart ached for all of them and she felt terribly undeserving of this, even with all the struggles that had come with falling through the stones.

Letting out a slow, measured breath, Claire opened her eyes and listened. Birds chirped happily in the distance, the leaves brushed against each other in a quiet song, and somewhere, further away, and moving closer…was the sound of her name on familiar lips.

Jamie was looking for her.

Claire blinked back the tears that had gathered in her eyes, pushed away the sting in her heart, and straightened her back. If there was anything she had learned since the war, since her parent’s death, was very little could be accomplished by sitting with the past and playing with your ghosts. She wasn’t finished trying to get home, not really, but she was starting to believe that maybe a life spent here, wouldn’t be so bad.

“Claire?”

Looking over toward where the trees parted a little, Claire found Jamie standing there, hand on his hip, expression a little stern and eyes very forgiving. Despite herself, a smile spread over her lips at the sight of him, the ring on her finger smooth and comforting as the one on her other hand. She had once thought that the best thing about her position in the war was the fact that her and Frank could at very least understand each other, that they wouldn’t be alone with their nightmares and struggles. She could never imagine what it must be like to stay at home, waiting for her husband to come back, only to find that he were a different man, forever lost to her. In some ways, she’d been lucky to serve.

There had been a pervasive fear she had refused to give name to when she fell through the stones. She had been alone, a stranger in a foreign time and land, with nobody to understand her or her beliefs. Claire hadn’t felt that lonely since the night her parents died and she been left alone in the world save for her uncle, with all these sympathetic faces trying to help but unable to understand.

That fear was all but gone. Jamie might not know about time-travel or what a real war was, he might not even be able to comprehend her objections to the casual violence they wrought on each other…but she wasn’t alone anymore. Jamie, despite their differences, was a good man and he genuinely tried to understand. He was a friend and in the end that was exactly what she had needed to keep going and not lose her mind.

Jamie stepped closer, didn’t question why she sat alone among the trees and smiled in response to hers, “ready to go home Sassenach?”

She was starting to think she was.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell your prompts into the void that is my Tumblr ;)


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